"You were going to use me to lead it underground where you could kill it."

"Not you. I hadn't expected you to survive the night. "

"You might have given me the benefit of the doubt. "

"I did. When I saw you speak with Megan it set me wondering if perhaps by some chance you might have survived."

"You watched me talk to her? But if I had been taken by the Untainted then she was in terrible danger. "

"Megan is small fry compared to Kareesh. I couldn't see the Untainted risking exposure just for her sake. "

"And what about Fenlock? Did you set him up too? "

"He was an unexpected complication. Once he had you, though, there was little I could do to intervene. I knew what would happen once he got you into the alley. "

"He d.a.m.n near killed me."

"He confirmed what I'd already deduced. You used gallowfyre on Fenlock. He was so convinced you weren't a threat that he didn't understand what was happening until it was too late."

"I didn't mean to. It just happened. I was trying to get his hand from around my throat and I started blacking out. When I opened my eyes my glow was everywhere. "

"Panic reaction. Your instinct brought it on, but you would still need to have intended to use it. "

"I was trying to push him away with magic. I tried to get him to forget me."

"He was already using his magic on you, filling you with fear and panic."

"When I couldn't get free, I let it loose. It was the only other thing I could do." The memory of my hands clawed into his wrists returned to me. I felt vaguely nauseous.

"It's ironic really, he probably saved you. Your panic reaction sucked the life essence out of him, consuming the very thing that makes him exist. It's obscene." I was shocked by the cold tone in her voice. "He was trying to kill me."

"Sure, and he would have, but your essence, your lifeblood and your magic would have spilled out, consuming your flesh and returning it to the earth, completing the cycle and at the same time, beginning it again."

"You believe in reincarnation?"

"Not in the sense of a soul reborn, but in the cycle of nature and magic, yes. All magic is given by the earth as life is given. It is eventually returned to the earth to become again. It is not a belief so much as an expression of the Feyre's existence. We live, we die and others will come after us, it is our nature. "

"I was only defending myself."

She continued as if I hadn't spoken. "But that way, nothing comes after. The cycle is broken. It's what was originally thought to be the cause of Fey infertility. The wraithkin were slowly consuming us, one by one, until there was nothing left to come back. They were preventing us from beginning the cycle again."

"But you said it was selective breeding. Politics, you said."

"I still believe that, but I am one of the Gifted, a halfbreed, and partly human. There are many of the Feyre who still believe the wraithkin are sucking us dry and that is the reason we cannot breed. They believe that by consuming life in its essence, the wraithkin are eating our future. "

"Can't you explain it to them? Make them understand?"

"You're asking me to overturn a hundred millennia of belief with five minutes of science." Her expression said this was unlikely to work.

"So that leaves me as some kind of ghoulish parasite. "

"It's not like that. The Feyre believe the world is in balance, that where there is true beauty there must be ugliness, where there is life, there must be death. The wraiths and the shades are our darkness, Rabbit, but they're not parasites, they're Fey."

"Either way, it doesn't leave me in a very good position, does it? The Untainted are already hunting me and as soon as the rest of them realise what I am, they will be too."

She laughed bitterly. "They're not going to hunt you. They will avoid you. The wraithkin are what the Feyre frighten their children with. And as for the Untainted, I have no idea what they'll do. As far as they are concerned, you can't exist. That must have been what saved you. She must have been as surprised as I was to find you could summon gallowfyre. I only wish I could have seen the expression on her face. "

"Would you want to get that close?"

She was silent. I looked up and for a fleeting second there was something cold behind those grey eyes. She turned away, walking towards the street window, looking down onto the traffic and concealing her expression. I worked my knees then gingerly walked forward towards the brightness of the windows, using the wall to steady me as my joints regained their mobility and joined her at the window, though not too close. At the windows I stopped. "Blackbird, that's it! "

"What is?"

"That building, the one with the roof covered in verdigris across the street, that's the building from the vision, the one Kareesh showed me."

"Why would she show you a vision of Australia House?"

I looked out at the distinctive green-stained roof of the building opposite.

"I honestly have no idea."

Ten.

The building across the road was the one from my vision. It was suddenly sharp and clear in my mind. No wonder I had thought I recognised it. I must have been past it hundreds of times.

Blackbird stood at the window, looking across the street, but she wasn't focusing on the building. She was lost in thought. Whatever it was she was thinking about, it didn't lighten her mood.

"Are the visions always like this, so fragmented and disjointed?"

There was a pause while she returned to herself and then she spoke, looking out over the street rather than at me.

"The way Kareesh once explained it to me, the future is a warren of paths and junctions. She has shown you the main junctions you might pa.s.s through from your present. Which path you take, though, and where you end up is for you to choose."

I tried to imagine time as pa.s.sages and tunnels crisscrossing into the future. It didn't help. I glanced at Blackbird, staring stiffly out of the window. "What's wrong?" I asked her.

"It's nothing." She dismissed my question and continued to watch the traffic, but I could hear the lie in that statement.

"Does finding out that my Fey ancestor was wraithkin make that much of a difference?"